1. Field of Invention
This invention is related to the computing domain for representing and processing activity models of a broad range of systems like information systems, mechanical systems and biochemical systems.
2. Description of Prior Art
The essence of all human endeavors lies in action. The Hindu God, Shiva, is referred to as “Laya Kara”; which means the force behind all actions. The Sanskrit word “Laya” strictly means commotion. Action therefore is not just an endeavor, but also a means to signify our existence. Western philosophers studied action mechanisms rigorously, and the essence of these studies, characterize action both as a linguistic phenomenon and as a philosophical notion. Computing is equally absorbed in actions, and their compositions into activities.
Activity modeling was studied extensively in prior art, Unified Modeling Language, UML (ref-4), may be considered as the condensed extract of most of the past research efforts. Business Process Execution Language, BPEL (ref-5) was a more recent effort, and may be considered as a fair standard of modeling services. DAML-S (ref-6) describes process ontology.
UML was originally conceived as a model documentation language, and although executable programs could be derived from it, UML lacks robust mechanisms for composing actions and interactions. Many of the modeling techniques of UML may be viewed as belonging to the class of flow-charting/documentation technique.
BPEL is largely related to service orchestration, and is a coarse activity modeler, where activities are used as elements to derive larger constructs, which may be called tasks. BPEL does not address the fine-grained process constructs, which may be viewed as a severe limitation of the technology.
DAML-S and its derivatives are high-level modelers, which utilizes Ontology's. The power of DAML-S was derived from ontology's, which is the combined effort of several industries & universities, and will probably remain unmatched for a long time. The inventor believes that DAML-S has laid too much emphasis in set theoretic relations, and although these are essential (like vitamins to humans), they are not the complete set of concepts, upon which actions depend upon.
The inventor believes that First Order Logic (popularly known as FOL) upon which Ontology's (including DAML-S) depend does not put any restrictions on qualities of objects. Technically speaking, there is not a straw of guidance to the developer or end user, on how the technology may be utilized. This leads to the well-known syndrome of reinventing the wheel, whenever and wherever it is required. Computing unlike other branches like mechanical, electrical engineering is plagued by re-inventions of concepts and mechanisms.
The inventor believes that the absence of proper lingua-franca is a severe limitation of DAML-S, and other ontology's, which could affect the efforts to standardize concepts and mechanisms. In lay man's terms, the battle is in the realm of representation, rather than in the realm of reasoning, which is fairly rigid.
Aristotle may be first person to describe categories (ref-3), and to ascribe Categories to objects. Aristotle was criticized for this astounding work, as the “Categories” are regarded as incomplete to address all needs. The inventor believes that Ontology's, which is extensively researched today, is a continuation of the work of Aristotle Categories.
It may be noted that Categorization, simplifies reasoning many folds. For example, we need not discover by applying logic, “whether a dog flies”, since we know that dog is a mammal and cannot fly. In other words, once we have a set of generic Objects, and establish their categories and properties, we could easily discover the capabilities of other objects, by mapping the object to one of the categories already established.
The current invention is referred to as “Knowledge Base Modeler or KBM”, and relies upon my previous invention called KB (ref-1). KBM provides an extraordinary number of generic concepts, specifically derived from linguistics and process engineering, to depict complex process models. The following example, which arose from many years of my research in this area (ref-2), provides a greater insight into the above comments.
Let us consider that a molecule A, is bound to another molecule P, by some action. Let us further assume that molecule A has undergone a change in form (structure change), characteristics (acidic to basic), a model change (structure of internal components, like appearance/disappearance of receptors, or their reactivity), a functional change indicating its latest capabilities like hydrophobic, or hydrophilic, a disposition like what the molecule were to become in later stages of the activity, a transformation like how the molecule transformed till now, during successive actions of the activity. Further, we may select the molecule A, in a later stage of the activity, if it had undergone particular transformations, and/or had particular functional capabilities, like being hydrophilic.
It may be argued that KBM and DAML-S are complementary efforts, as KBM is absorbed in concept representation and transformation, whereas DAML-S (to the best of inventors opinion) is absorbed in reasoning about concepts.
Modeling is a complex process, as it needs to address simultaneously, the low-level concepts detailed above, and high-level notions, which are related to machinery vs material interactions.
Modeling may be broadly segmented into Operational Modeling (low level modeling), Conceptual Modeling (high level modeling), and Abstract Modeling (highest level). Recent research efforts in computing are attempting to address the disconnectedness that exists between operation models and conceptual models. Model driven architecture MDA (ref-7), may be viewed as such an exercise.
Computational Linguistics approached the same subject, from a different viewpoint, and was more successful in providing rigorous models than pure computing. The work of Panini (ref-8) stands out, both as an exemplary art, and as an easily adaptable technique. The inventor believes that Panini's thematic roles are more suitable, for depicting interactions and actions generically, than MDA.
My previous invention KB (ref-1), provides novel mechanisms, for representation and processing rules, and works in conjunction with a varied number of host languages like java (ref-14), and C++ (ref-13).
KB (ref-1) defines a set of color types, and specific instances of these colors may be applied to entities. The important color types of KB are described below.
a) verb color for depicting operations, or roles.
b) noun color for depicting form.
c) auxiliary color for depicting the navigation path (or path of containment).
d) special color for executing methods of predefined objects.
KB Rules are defined in terms of entity types, which are adorned with KB colors. KB Translator translates these KB rules into equivalent host language statements.
KB (ref-1) belongs to a class of programming languages called “Descriptive Languages”, as opposed to popular languages like java and C++ which are procedural in nature. In spite of the impedance mismatch, KB Rules are embedded in host language methods.
The power or advantage of KB may be described as:
a) ability to conceptualize basic lingua franca
b) ability to execute rules, which are based on these basic concepts.
The drawbacks or limitations of KB, may be described as:
a) Conceptual notions used by KB like verb color, noun color, auxiliary color are very basic, where as typical application processing demands complex notions.
b) KB did not concentrate on “Integration”, which is a key element for architecting and building complex information models. Although KB provides a mechanism to execute methods using the special color, it is too naïve, and lacks robustness to execute complex rules, and to integrate the results, back into the current rule.Thus, in spite of the domain knowledge of various systems, producing a transformable activity model, which depicts or knits the multiple layers of the activity model, into a coherent system, is still elusive, and unknown in prior art. The term transformable activity model here means a mechanism and/or a tool, by which an activity model may be converted into executable code.